Those who have been there before can guess at the signs.  Things were pretty dark in Red-Star-controlled Japan, so naturally Terra's education on it went two-fold, the things they wanted to teach her and the things they didn't want her to know.  The reason she defected was that Red-Star was made up of horrible short-sighted people who created more horrors up around them.  And then, one day, they got exactly what they wanted...but in the wrong direction.  It went to the other side.  But now, Terra was [i]confronted[/i] by the other side and what it had for her was completely unexpected.  What she found was a young lady from a different place with a different background and a different life, maybe totally different from her...and yet there were certain similarities to their current situation, as well.  For Terra, these things bothered her, but she had a hold of it.  For Kxeyun, though...

She wasn't able to keep her cool, like Terra did, and it showed.  What she displayed externally was the frustration of things having not gone well.  It had to have been something like leaving people behind, because that is what Terra did, and it still gnawed at her in the deep recesses of her mind.  It would probably do so for a while.  The memory and the irritation and the feeling of less was there, but the impulse to express it wasn't allowed to form.  Kxeyun described her escape from Denver-Vegas after her time in the Reality Games, an NC combat sport that Terra had read about at some point.  She had left people she cared about, had to kill someone she cared about...  Terra watched her as she seemed to be disintegrating before her very eyes.

[color=ed1c24][i]No...  Stop it.  You can't let it control you like that.  It never stops hurting, that way...[/i][/color]

For the moment, Terra was silent because this was dredging up things in herself...

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[i]When Terra was a child, she cried only once, and then never wanted to do it again because of how much it seemed to hurt.  She didn't know why, at the time, but because of her accelerated learning, she understood the whole thing beyond emotional response and emotional pain.  She didn't become some sort of lunatic who simply did not feel.  She just didn't want to be hurt by the emotions, to be overwhelmed and lose herself in them.  She once had an argument with her parents about it when she had fallen and scraped her knee hard enough to draw blood.

[b]"Why don't you cry?  Doesn't it hurt?"[/b]

[color=ed1c24]"Yes, it hurts."[/color]

[b]"Then, why don't you cry?"[/b]

[color=ed1c24]"I don't want to cry because I don't want to hurt even more."[/color]

Imagine a ten-year-old talking down to you.  That's what this was like for her folks.

[b]"But it's a stress-reliever."[/b]

[color=ed1c24]"I don't make stress.  I can shut it down."[/color]

[b]"How will we know what you're feeling, though?  If you never show anything...who will ever know?"[/b]

And at that, their child scowled at them.

[color=ed1c24]"I can show any emotion I want.  I don't want THAT ONE.  It only makes things harder for me."[/color]

Sadness and depression, fear and anxiety - these things kept her from reaching decisions she needed to make in the blink of an eye.  Keeping them down to a dull roar allowed her to get on with things.  Eventually, the reason for the pain fades away, and there's nothing left to keep down anymore...usually.[/i]

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Others in the room saw and heard her tearing herself apart and came over to try and calm her down.  She had nothing.  She might've had more than her at the start, but they both had nothing now.  Whoever built Sahaquiel must've meant alot to her, and they were on another continent now, perhaps lost.  Jack, whoever he was, must've been important to her, and she killed him and didn't know why.  Terra had not cared who it was she had killed on the way out of her facility.  She had, in fact, aimed to destroy the entire hangar she'd been in before leaving, and probably did quite alot of damage.  She felt that was good.

What she did not like was that she had left behind what apparently Kxeyun never really had: Parents.

Red-Star had allowed her to remain with her parents, presumably as a means to keep her in check, but they didn't count on her abandoning them as she had.  Them...and the several individuals she'd found likeable during her rise through puberty.  [i]That[/i] was an interesting time...  The point of all this was that Terra was not uncaring or unable to feel emotions.  She hated being put through the more harmful points of one, the very racking of the soul that Kxeyun was going through.  Rather abruptly, Terra stood up to bring herself closer to the other pilot and place a hand firmly on her shoulder.

[color=ed1c24]"Kxeyun, I can help you cope and understand, help you deal with this.  For now, we don't have much time until we prepare for combat.  Stay alive and find me afterwards."[/color]